598 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



stock purchased from commercial nurseries. The first forest planting ever 

 undertaken b}' the state was done this spring with stock of this sort. Planting 

 areas of about forty acres each were chosen which would require the minimum 

 amount of artificial fire-lines to protect them. They were close enough together 

 so that all work could be done from one camp. About fifty men were hired 

 for the planting season. They were mostly ''lumber jacks" who had never 

 before planted trees and were naturally careless with their work, necessi- 

 tating close supervision. The planting was done with mattocks in the more 

 favorable open spots between stumps and masses of brush where the spacing 

 was unavoidably irregular, but approximated six feet each way. There were 

 nearly 200,000 trees planted, of which 182,000 w^ere white pine, 5,000 western 

 yellow pine, 5,000 Norway spruce, and 1,100 Norway pine. The white pines 

 were three-year-old seedlings and the others were four-year-old stock which 

 had been in the transplant beds two years. They were vigorous healthy- 

 looking plants, but on account of careless packing for shipment, a rather 

 large percentage were received in poor condition. The work of planting 

 extended over a period of ten days, during which the weather was cloudy and 

 rainy, making an excellent planting period. The month following was dry 

 and hot, while the remainder of the summer was wet and cool. The results 

 for the season's plant'lng were very favorable. Counts of living and dead 

 plants on half-acre plots show that 60 per cent of the white pine are alive, 

 75 per cent of the Norway pine, 55 per cent of the Norway spruce and 98 

 per cent of the western yellow pine. 



Permanent headquarters for the assistant state forester have been built 

 at Trout Lake, Vilas County, near the large central nursery and in the geo- 

 graphical center of the state forest area. Here the assistant forester is in 

 touch with all the rangers by telephone and from here all parts of the forest 

 are easily reached by either railroad or wagon road or trail. This will be 

 the central distributing point for supplies, tools and equipment for the 

 rangers. From here instructions will be issued to them, and orders given for 

 field work of various kinds, in fact, a great deal of the business of the woods 

 will be transacted at this point. Should the University of Wisconsin estab- 

 lish a ranger school, a matter now under consideration, the field instruction 

 will be given at the Trout Lake headquarters. Negotiations are under way for 

 equipping this station with apparatus for measuring rain-fall, wind velocity, 

 humidity, etc., in co-operation with the United States Weather Bureau. This 

 fall enough seed will be collected to furnish the nursery already established 

 and the one that will be started in the spring at Tomahawk Lake. The site 

 has been chosen and plans made for the new nursery to produce 500,000 plants 

 annually. Next spring about 60,000 trees will be planted in the field and the 

 work on telephone systems, roads and fire-lines will be continued. 



